Abstract

Knowledge sharing is a process
where individuals mutually exchange their
knowledge and jointly create new knowledge.
Several of the previous studies found that
besides face-to-face interactions, students
also share their knowledge through social
media tools. Social media tools are currently
considered as the key value in the campus to
facilitate knowledge sharing and the main
tasks in order to support the daily
communication. Although the importance of
using these tools among the students in
educational institutions, many dimensions of
knowledge sharing in social media
environments have not yet been examined.
Furthermore, many questions are still
unanswered and need to be explored across
different social media tools. Additionally,
literature also stressed the need to focus more
on use the social media with education in
developing countries. For this purpose, this
empirical study sought to explore the
knowledge sharing activities among local and
international postgraduate students at one of
public universities in Malaysia, as well as find
the benefits and barriers through using social
media tools during sharing knowledge. With
regard to data collection, the best manner to
understand the perspective of the students
about some of the new phenomena through
harness qualitative approach. Data were
collected through qualitative approach. More
specifically, a total of 12 postgraduate
students were interviewed and received
answers from them through semi-structure
interviews. Interpretive analysis method was
used to find the themes via using NVivo
qualitative data analysis software. The results
for this study included four sections based on
Nonaka and Takeuchi theory. The findings
indicated that, the activities for students
include exchange experience and perspective
as well as confirmed the importance of social
media in overcome time, geographical
distance and cost that is a barriers to share
knowledge as well as provide more confident
to share ideas for students.This study
contributed by using the Nonaka and Takeuchi
model with higher educational institutions. In the same context, there are few empirical
studies focused on the Information technology
with knowledge sharing, therefore this
research sought to add valuable information
into the literature by shedding light the
barriers and the benefits through utilize the
new technologies to share know among the
team work.